Secret to long life? She says, don't marry.

When Ruth Leiber was a few days away from turning 110 years old, a friend asked her what her secret was to longevity. There’s a bit of a hint on her left ring finger. There’s still a line there, a reminder of an engagement ring she’s worn for most of her life. She was engaged once. Her fiance died of malaria before they could marry. To this day, she’s never tied the knot.

“Can you think of any married people who have lived this long?” she asked as more than 50 friends and family surrounded her as she opened a pile of birthday cards in front of her. The crowd around her erupted with laughter. Her other secret: “I just refuse to die.”

She speaks from experience. A scrappy entrepreneur who kept busy traveling the world, she’s outlived most of her family. She’s outlived all of her sister Irene’s children. Five generations stood around her in the banquet hall of the Easter Seals Day Break Adult Day Health Care Center in Winter Park. Among them were great-great-great-nephews and nieces. One of her great-nephews, Joe Zuber, was born before the Great Depression.

“She’s been to more funerals, I guarantee you, than anybody alive,” great-nephew Dr. Arthur Petty said. “And she’s taken care of more people than anyone alive too.”

And in that time she’s watched a world undergo two world wars and the invention of the car and the airplane. When she was born on March 24, 1902, she was in an Ohio farmhouse with no electricity, the British empire still controlled a fifth of the world and movie theaters hadn’t been invented yet. A week later, the first one opened in Los Angeles.

She never dreamt of making her big break in Hollywood, but she did have a knack for creating that movie star look. She owned a beauty salon for much of her life, though she eventually retired from it in 1967. By the time she was collecting social security, man hadn’t yet landed on the moon.

Forty-five years later, the Social Security Administration called. Thinking they might have been hoodwinked, they asked to meet Leiber for the first time. Though her age had already gained her a bit of fame, they weren’t interested in an autograph. They wanted proof that she was still alive.

“They held up a picture from when she was 100, looked at her and said ‘I guess she’s still alive,’“ Petty said.

To make things even more official, at her birthday celebration a day early on March 23, Winter Park Mayor Ken Bradley stopped by to proclaim the day Ruth Leiber Day in the city, and to ask her out on a date.

“We’re going to go out to dinner tonight,” Bradley joked about the woman who is 60 years his senior. “She’s still an eligible young lady.”

As the crowd gathered to sing her “Happy Birthday,” they may have reminded her of a fond old memory of the first time she heard the song. It wasn’t officially invented until she was 10 years old. She may not have heard it today. Her hearing isn’t too great anymore, Petty said. And she lost both of her hearing aids right before her birthday. Peering across the crowd through thick glasses, she smiled as they sang.

Then the little lady who loves food but somehow has always kept a trim figure had her cake and ate it too, but not before she made a wish and blew out the candles.

“[Winter Park Fire Chief Jim White] is here in case they had 110 candles,” Bradley said.

Her birthday wish? Longevity.

“I wish to do this every year for the next 50 years,” she said.